In an
address delivered to tens of thousands of supporters in Baghdad’s Tahrir
Square, al-Sadr said he had received numerous death threats -- he did
not say by whom -- due to his loud and frequent calls for government
reform.

“Continue on the path of
revolution and reform… even in the event of my death,” he asserted,
while urging followers to keep their protests peaceful.

“If
Iraq’s official election commission and electoral law remain as they
are, we will be forced to boycott the polls,” he declared.

Hundreds of Iraqis did useful things yesterday including the hundred who rallied in Baghdad's Tahrir Square. ALSUMARIA reports they
rallied to call for reforms in the government (corruption) and reforms
in the election law and the Independent High Electoral Commission. ALSUMARIA reports hundred also protested in Karbala with the same demands.

"People in West #Mosul are trapped in the situation of penury & panic." Our representative in Iraq explains the latest developments

Mosul situation deteriorating as fighting rages

Around 400,000 people thought to be trapped in the Old City lack food, clean water and fuel to keep themselves warm.

3 replies75 retweets38 likes

Yesterday, we noted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's comments
explaining the US military would not be leaving Iraq even if the Islamic
State was defeated. Jordan Shilton covers it for WSWS:

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared Washington’s intention
to keep troops deployed more or less indefinitely in the territories now
occupied by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in remarks delivered at the
beginning of a two-day meeting of the US-organized anti-ISIS coalition
in Washington.“The military power of the coalition will remain
where this fraudulent caliphate has existed in order to set the
conditions for a full recovery from the tyranny of ISIS,” he told an
audience that included Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. He gave no
indication of when, if ever, US troops could be withdrawn from a war
zone extending across Iraq and Syria, where there has been fighting of
greater or lesser intensity throughout the 14 years since the US first
invaded Iraq.

Tillerson also called for the establishment of
“interim zones of stability” in Syria to which refugees from the
US-instigated civil war that has raged throughout that country for the
past six years could be forcibly returned. Areas will be deemed “safe”
if they have been initially cleared of ISIS, an absurdly low standard
given the deadly conflicts which continue to rage between different
factions in the Syrian civil war.

At some point, we'll get around to Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Joseph Dunford's comments this week that the US military will be in Iraq
for "years to come."